Tag Archives: SCOTUS

national news

SCOTUS picks, then and now

Let’s review briefly the course that two U.S. Supreme Court nominations took.

In early 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia died. President Barack Obama not long afterward nominated Judge Merrick Garland to succeed the conservative judicial icon. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t wait for the nomination to come forward. He declared within hours of Scalia’s death that Obama would not replace Justice Scalia under any circumstance.

The SCOTUS seat remained vacant for the rest of that year. Donald Trump got elected president and then nominated Neil Gorsuch. The Senate heard from the nominee, then confirmed him.

It was the delay that enraged so many Americans.

The Republican Senate majority had no problem dragging its feet to await the outcome of the 2016 election.

What a change has occurred.

Justice Anthony Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court. The president then nominated Brett Kavanaugh to succeed him. Judge Kavanaugh went through the confirmation hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Then a woman came forward to allege that the nominee assaulted her sexually when they were in high school. Then we hear from two more women who said essentially the same thing.

The GOP majority was having none of it. The committee heard from one of the women and from Kavanaugh.

Now the Judiciary panel is going to vote today whether to confirm Kavanaugh’s nomination. The majority says it cannot wait. It has to rush this nomination forward. The questions about what happened in the early 1980s? Hey, minds are made up.

Let’s rush forward.

So … one president’s nomination gets stonewalled for a year. Another one’s selection hops on the fast track.

To think that Majority Leader McConnell has the gall to accuse the other side of “playing politics.”

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After the hearing, they’re going to vote anyway … wow!

A congressional hearing that was billed as a seminal moment in U.S. political history has produced, um, apparently nothing.

The Senate Judiciary Committee — which heard from two people at the center of a firestorm — is going to vote Friday on whether to confirm one of those principals to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

To which I only can say: Holy cow, man!

Judge Brett Kavanaugh denied passionately the accusation leveled by Christine Blasey Ford. They both talked to the Senate committee. Ford said Kavanaugh attacked her when they were both in high school; Kavanaugh denied it.

Who’s more credible? I believe Professor Ford.

Thus, I would hope the Senate panel would delay this confirmation vote until it could gather more information.

The so-called “elephant in the hearing room” was a man who reportedly witnessed the alleged attack. That would be Mark Judge, a friend of Kavanaugh. Judge has been nowhere to be seen or heard.

I believe Judge should testify as well.

It won’t happen, apparently. The Judiciary Committee is stampeding forward — or so it appears — with a vote on whether to recommend Kavanaugh’s nomination.

This process has been called a “disgrace” and a “sham” by those who support Judge Kavanaugh. I agree with them. It has been both of those things.

The disgraceful sham, though, well might play out when the Senate Judiciary Committee rushes to judgment with its vote.

legal news, national news

Is this confirmation turning into a stampede?

Well, here we are, ladies and gentlemen.

Brett Kavanaugh and a woman who has accused him of sexually assaulting her are going to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh has been nominated by Donald Trump to join to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The testimony will occur on Thursday. What happens the next day? Oh, the committee is scheduled to vote on whether to confirm Kavanaugh to the court.

Hey, it gets better. The full Senate, all 100 of ’em, then might get to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination as early as next Monday!

Let us not forget that two more women have leveled similar accusations against the proposed justice to the nation’s highest court. The Senate is moving at breakneck speed on a matter that to my way of thinking needs a good bit more time.

Does this look as much to you like a stampede as it does to me?

Christine Blasey Ford, who will testify Thursday, has done a remarkable thing. She has dropped the name of Kavanaugh’s supposed good friend — Mark Judge — as a witness to what she alleged occurred in the 1908s at a high school party. Why in the world would she expose this friend to intense public scrutiny if she is making all this up?

I continue to believe there needs to be a thorough investigation by the FBI to determine the veracity of what Ford has alleged. The FBI also ought to look carefully at the accusations leveled by the two other women.

Will the world stop spinning if Kavanaugh’s confirmation is delayed while the FBI gumshoes do their job? Of course not!

I am trying like the dickens to avoid passing judgment on Judge Kavanaugh. I merely want these accusations to be examined fully and carefully.

I do not want to witness a Senate stampede.

national news

Sen. and Mrs. Cruz get mistreated … enough already!

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz and his wife, Heidi, have been treated badly by those who are angry over his support of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

There’s a certain irony in the way the Cruzes were forced to leave a trendy Washington, D.C., restaurant. A crowd of protesters accosted them verbally at the restaurant, criticizing the senator for his support of Donald Trump’s selection to the highest court in America.

Kavanaugh, in case you’ve been in outer space for the past few weeks, has been accused of sexual assault on a woman when he was a teenager.

To be totally candid, as much as I dislike Sen. Cruz and want him to lose his re-election bid in November, I also dislike the manner in which these protests have been targeted against some political leaders and their family members. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family got the same kind of treatment; so did former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Scott Pruitt. Let me be clear: I disapprove of those who would badger and hassle public officials who seek some private time.

And so, now it’s Ted and Heidi Cruz’s turn. Oh, the irony?

The man against whom Cruz is running, Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, has gained a lot of political momentum by calling for a return to the better angels of our political society. O’Rourke has been lambasting the politics of division, of rancor, of hatred.

By my way of looking at it, this is the kind of behavior that O’Rourke should condemn in the strongest terms possible.

legal news

If you think the Kavanaugh battle is tough, just wait

The fight to seat Brett Kavanaugh on the U.S. Supreme Court has turned into a donnybrook, with charges of sexual assault coming from two women who contend the high court nominee misbehaved seriously when he was a much younger individual.

The battle was joined actually before that, when Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to succeed Anthony Kennedy on the nation’s highest court.

From a philosophical standpoint, though, I remain somewhat perplexed as to progressives’ angst over the thought of Kavanaugh joining the court. He is a conservative who would replace another conservative on the nine-member Supreme Court.

Yet the fight has been joined. Progressives don’t want Kavanaugh on the court because they fear he could overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that in 1973 made abortion legal in this country.

If you think that this has been the Mother of Supreme Court Battles, just wait — heaven forbid — Trump gets a chance to nominate someone to replace one of the court’s four remaining liberal justices.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg keeps emerging as the next likely jurist to leave the court. She said she isn’t going anywhere as long as Trump is president. I’ll take her at her word, provided she can control her own destiny … if you get my drift.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonja Sotomayor and Elena Kagan? They aren’t leaving on their own while Trump is in the White House.

Fate does have a way of intervening, so it’s wise to keep your minds open to potential shock waves when any of the four progressive justices decide it’s time to go.

If you for a moment thought this fight over Brett Kavanaugh is as bad as it gets, then you need to take another look across the political landscape and anticipate the eruption that would occur if Donald Trump gets to find someone to replace one of the court’s liberals.

We’d all better hold on with both hands.

legal news

What man wouldn’t face such an allegation?

U.S. Rep. Steve King, the Iowa Republican known to utter a bizarre statement on occasion, has done it again.

He has called Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers, a character assassin. King said Ford is out to destroy the reputation of a man nominated to the high court by Donald Trump.

He said the following: “You add all of that together and I’m thinking, is there any man in this room that wouldn’t be subjected to such an allegation? A false allegation?”

King paints with a broad brush

Hmm. Let me think about that. Even though I am not in the “room” King referenced, I believe I could avoid being “subjected to such an allegation.” Why? Because I’ve never done the thing that Ford has accused Kavanaugh of doing.

Ford is going to testify before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee. Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, another Iowa Republican, has decided to postpone the committee’s vote on Kavanaugh’s confirmation until after the two principals testify before the panel.

Let’s hear them both out. Let us, moreover, allow ourselves the opportunity to determine who is telling the truth.

As for Rep. King’s weird assertion that implies that no man could avoid being “subjected to such an allegation,” he ought to quit generalizing about men — and certainly about women.

legal news

This accuser isn’t looking for publicity

Christine Blasey Ford’s accusation against Brett Kavanaugh is beginning to sound more believable, at least to me.

Ford has accused Kavanaugh, a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, of sexually assaulting her when the two of them were teenagers 36 years ago. She said Kavanaugh was drunk, he took her into a room, covered her mouth to keep her from screaming and then groped her, seeking to have sex with her.

Kavanaugh denies the incident occurred.

But the question keeps popping into my noggin: Why would this woman, a university professor, level a charge she knows is false?

She wants the FBI to investigate the case. Does someone with a phony accusation insist on an FBI probe? Ford says she wants a third person to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to recommend Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the nation’s highest court. Would a bogus accuser subject a third person to insult and possible emotional injury?

I still want to hear from Judge Kavanaugh and Professor Ford. I want them to speak to senators about the accusation that has been leveled against a man who wants to interpret the U.S. Constitution at the highest judicial level in the land.

Something tells me there might be more to this than we know.

national news

FBI probe would answer many questions, right?

Christine Blasey Ford has leveled an accusation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh; she wants the FBI to examine it thoroughly before she testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee that is considering whether to recommend Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the high court.

As a friend and former colleague of mine has asked on social media: One wants an FBI investigation. One doesn’t want an FBI investigation. Which one would you believe?

Ford wants the FBI to examine her allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh doesn’t want the FBI to look into the allegation.

Hmm. My friend does pose a fair question.

The FBI took all of three days to conclude an investigation in 1991 when a University of Oklahoma law professor, Anita Hill, accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. She testified before the Judiciary Committee, as did Thomas. The committee recommended Thomas’s confirmation and the full Senate then confirmed him in a 52-48 vote.

Thus, if the FBI can help determine the veracity of the allegation made against the current high court nominee, why would the person accused of wrongdoing oppose it?

national news

How does POTUS even discuss sexual abuse?

We are living in the wackiest of worlds.

Donald Trump got elected president of the United States after admitting to groping women, grabbing them by their private parts, saying he could have his way with women because of his “celebrity” status.

The president than nominates a fellow to the U.S. Supreme Court. Brett Kavanaugh was coasting to confirmation. Then trouble presented itself in the form of an allegation by a woman who says that when she and Kavanaugh were teenagers, the future judge attacked her, committing an act of sexual assault at a high school party.

Kavanaugh denies the incident occurred. Christine Ford, who has become a college professor, insists it did.

Meanwhile, the president — the guy with his overloaded baggage wagon — weighs in with comments questioning the veracity of Ford’s allegation. He is backing Brett Kavanaugh to the hilt.

My question? How does the president of the United States dare comment on anything at all relating to this kind of allegation?

He doesn’t seem to understand that the record is replete with his own involvement with women. Doesn’t the president grasp the idea that his own acknowledgement of such bad behavior can haunt him continually?

Were the judge to speak to the Judiciary panel, he could do so privately. He could speak from his gut. He can persuade those on the Judiciary Committee that he’s all grown up no.

As for the president, I want to offer him some unsolicited advice: Don’t talk about sexual assault out loud, in public, in front of reporters. Donald Trump is in enough trouble as it is without being buried under reminders of his own sexual misbehavior.

national news

Kavanaugh nomination on rocky ground, but not doomed

It’s pretty clear that Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s road to the U.S. Supreme Court has hit a serious pot hole.

I’m not yet sure his nomination to join the nation’s highest court is doomed.

A woman has come forward with a 35-year-old claim that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers. Kavanaugh, Donald Trump’s nominee to the court, denies the event took place. The woman swears it did.

Speaking of “swearing” to the veracity of her allegation, Christine Ford is going to take an oath next Monday to tell the whole truth to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is considering whether to recommend Kavanaugh to the full Senate.

If she is proven to perjure herself before the court, then her allegations is toast.

Then again, Kavanaugh also will take an oath to tell the truth. If he lies under oath — or if it can be proven that he lied, which is a tall order — then his nomination is toast.

I’ve wrestled with this one. Can teenagers grow out of their youthful nastiness to become upstanding adults? Sure they can. If this event happened, does Kavanaugh’s status as a federal judge and a devoted husband and father negate what he might have done as a drunken teen?

Not exactly. He’s being considered for the highest judicial post in the United States of America. The post requires men and women to be of fine moral character. I mean, Douglas Ginsburg withdrew his high court nomination in 1987 after he admitted to smoking pot while in college. This allegation against Judge Kavanaugh in my mind rises to a higher level of misbehavior.

But still, the two principals are going to take an oath to tell the truth. One of them is lying. The Senate Judiciary Committee — deeply split already along partisan grounds — will have to decide whom to believe.

Good luck, ladies and gentlemen of the committee.